


untitled

by godcheekbones



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - War, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 12:08:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15630393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godcheekbones/pseuds/godcheekbones
Summary: Humanity is not winning. Not much of humanity left, to be honest.





	untitled

Lance gets called up for duty on his 18th birthday. He kisses his mother on the cheek, hugs his father tightly, and pinches his younger brother’s cheek, the only other sibling that the Garrison has not claimed in their war against the galaxy. He salutes his bedroom sardonically, the right half untouched for months on the end, and the left side packed up and neat and he _knows_ he is not coming back, just like his two older brothers, and his right hand falls by his side before he knows it.

 

The bus ride will take ten hours. Lance clutches his duffel bag close to his chest, staring outside the window moodily. His English is damn near fluent, but everybody talks fast and over each other. He is tired of the anxiety that laces through their words like a suffocating rope.

Somebody slides into the seat next to him. Lance gives him a side glance, elbow against the window, hand under his chin. The recruit has pale skin and bruises under his eyes, like he already knows how the front lines look like. Maybe because he has eyes like his _abuelo_ after the First Reckoning, like his only sister during her fiance’s military funeral, like the orphans packed in shanty towns with no preamble, that Lance asks on auto-pilot, “Want some candy?”

Lance is already fumbling through the side compartment on his bag, not catching the miniscule frown. He reaches out, palms out; green mint rations in its crumpled aluminium pack.

The recruit hesitates, but mumbles out a, _thanks, uh, uhm yeah,_ and Lance helpfully supplies, “Lance McClain, 5 th Regiment.”

“Keith Kogane, 2nd Regiment,” parrots back the recruit, who is _not_ a recruit, holy fuck, how is he not dead by now? He must have three stripes at least, did Keith get on the wrong bus– wait is _he_ the one on the wrong bus– 

Keith takes a mint. “If you’re heading to the Garrison, you’re on the right bus.”

There are fifty buses of recruits, cobbled together from able-bodied adults, children who only just turned into adults by an arbitrary date and children who volunteered their services. The dumb and innocent led astray by whispers of heroics, a roof over their heads, and three square meals a day. The others risk capital punishment. Lance prefers his last Hail Mary to be said while taking down a couple of alien assholes with him, thank you. 

Tomorrow, hundreds of them will line up in a field during morning parade. By next week, half of them will return home in body bags or telegram messages that start off with a lie: I am sorry for your loss.

Lance knows a girl, who knows a guy, who knows this girl who gets the radio to tap into the Garrison’s frequency at 8 o’clock when they read the names of the dead soldiers in a morbid lullaby before lights out. She is looking for two names, and exhales her feelings at the end of the programme, each shorter than the last.

Humanity is not winning. Not much of humanity left, to be honest.

“Any tips for staying alive?” Lance asks, aiming for cavalier. He falls flat, somewhere between hysterical laughter bubbling at the back of his throat and terror imagining his name fall from Commander Takashi Shirogane’s in a sombre monotone butchered by persistent radio static.

Beneath the bone-deep fatigue that settles in his shoulders slumped in the cushioned bus seat and long legs stretched languidly under the seat in front, Keith considers the question seriously.

“Trust your instincts?” he replies, a little thoughtful, a little sad, more a question than a statement.

Lance blows a raspberry. “My instincts tell me to go home.”

“That’d be defection, recruit,” Keith says, and covers his face with a red jacket. He mumbles, just barely audible, just before he nods off. “Fucking good instincts.”

 


End file.
